Prima delle risaie. Nota preliminare per una ricostruzione del paesaggio storico nel Vercellese occidentale

In 2001, construction work on the new railway TAV Milan-Turin, 1.5 km North of the modern settlement of Livorno Ferraris, in Piedmont, Northern Italy, brought to light a necro-polis comprising 212 tombs of different typology and an important number of grave goods (496)dated between the 1st and the 4th c.AD. The necropolis is unusual because of the wide variety of the typology of the tombs: the majority are simple earthen graves, but there are also graves that are wholly or partially lined by tiles, amphorae cut in half and containing ashes and grave goods. Themost attested rite is indirect cremation, but direct cremation in pits is also attested, as well as fivesporadic inhumations in cappuccina-like tombs. In October 2016 Pavia University, in full collab-oration with Livorno Ferraris Municipality (which has just opened an Archaeological Museum tocollect the archaeological finds of the area) and the Soprintendenza, started a five-year project, withtwo purposes: to identify the settlement, or the settlements, related to the necropolis; and to re-construct, in a diachronic perspective, the ancient landscape of the Western Vercelli territory fromthe Second Iron Age to the Middle Ages, with the focus on the Roman period.